U.S. President Barack Obama plans to answer questions from users of the social networking site Twitter in an online discussion on Wednesday.

The White House says the “town hall” session will focus on the U.S. economy and jobs.

Twitter users were encouraged last week to begin asking questions via Twitter messages tagged with the #AskObama label.

Twitter says questions for the president will be selected using an algorithm that determines how much online interaction the questions generated.

President Obama will respond to the questions in a live webcast from the East Room of the White House.

Mr. Obama’s personal Twitter feed – now managed by his 2012 campaign staff – has nearly 9 million followers.

The president participated in a similar online discussion hosted by Facebook earlier this year.